Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Is technology making us more connected or isolated?

Recently I heard TED talk by Sherry Turkle where she presented a interesting scenario where use of technology is helping us to be more connected but at the same time making us more isolated. Its a very fascinating talk, I liked it very much. All these social networking sites like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, my space, Orkut are now very popular among people from all age group (I myself use most of them). Since their launch many of these have become immensely popular with increasing number of users every day, some of them have more users than populations of many small countries. I think they are creating parallel planet of their own, a virtual planet where we live and interact with each other in very unique way, many have separate personalities and identity in that world. These social networking sites (or progress in digital technology) along with revolution in device manufacturing allowed us to use all these functions on our tablets, phones which we can carry in our pockets almost every where. Now almost everybody lives at least two lives one is real life and another one is plugged in life where we are with computer or these little devises constantly updating our status, tweeting out thoughts, posting on our blog or texting our friends, parents, etc. These little devises which entered our lives very recently are psychologically very powerful, they dominated our lives totally even before we realize that they are there. They also now make us to do the things which we normally never used do, like texting or checking FB status during any meeting or presentation or during class, parents and kids texting during dinner or whenever they are together and then complain about lack of attention from each other. These little devises changed not only what we do but also who we are, how we interact, they are even redefining our relationships.

No doubt that these technologies and devises have done many good things to us, they help us to reach to people who are geographically distant from us, helped world to come closer, made us aware of many issues around the globe and definitely improved our understanding of world. But all this came with some side effects, now a days I see that many kids are more comfortable with texting each other than talking with each other face to face. Many of us like to connect with each other but not to talk with each other, our understanding and meaning of conversation is changing. We are more comfortable with emails, texts, tweets or status updates as they allow us to edit our feelings and opinions before posting, they allow us to present our self as we want to be. Normal human conversations are often spontaneous and emotional. They take place in real time and many times we don't have control in which direction it might go. Our relationships are very demanding, even messy sometimes, require lot of commitment. These new techniques (texting, email, social networking) are pretty amazing and very useful but they can not replace face to face conversations at least within family.

We get a chance to understand each other better during face to face conversations, I know that its not possible to interact with all our friends and relatives like this but the problem is we are not doing it even with the people around us. This technology has definitely helped us to reduce the distance with our distant relatives, locate and reconnect with lost school friends, collage mates but at the same time it has distanced us from people around us. We want to be at many places at the same time, and these devises have given us the opportunity to exit and enter any place we want as per our own convenience. We pay attention only to the part of conversation or meeting in which we are interested and conveniently ignore the rest, some may call it efficient time management but at the same time by doing this we are getting more connected with machines than people around us. Slowly these phones and these other little devises are becoming our best friends for many of us, many phone companies are now developing software which they claim will make these devises our best companion and friend, and I think people believe in that. I am not at all against cell phones but still don't have one which I can
call my own. I use them as per my need, may be I am still old fashioned
guy...:)

We want to be connected with people but don't want them around us, we are now afraid of physical intimacy. Not many days before we used to remember people, used to get emotions and feelings and then call them to express them but now a days people want to have feelings to update their status, want to have something so that they can always present it on their wall. It seems that we started believing that being lonely is a problem and we need to solve it immediately. People forgot solitude, they don't like to be with themselves anymore, they don't know what to do when they are alone, they always want to remain connected. As Sherry Turkle said in her talk we have to reclaim those sacred places in our homes where conversations used to take place. We can't replace people with machines everywhere, at least not in our personal relationships. We can't operate from behind curtain all the time, good to get new technology and use it but we should not loose our old good ways of communication, we don't want to live with robotic companion, do we?